Vol. II. No. 8-9 



April-May, 1917 



Ur> versity of Virginia Record 
Extension Series 




THE RELATION OF THE COLLEGES 

AND UNIVERSITIES OF THE SOUTH 

TO THE NATIONAL CRISIS 



\j,y^x ^'M '/-'Vvc- ^^^\ 



Published by the University 



[Entered as Second-Class Matter at the Postoffice at Charlottesville, Va.} 






^f> 



BULLETINS OF THE BUREAU OF EXTENSION OF THE 
UNIVERSITY INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING '^ 
PUBLICATIONS. -^I 



1. Rural Life Bulletin— The Country Church j 

2. Virginia High School Quarterly — Published in November, February, Miy and 

August ^ j 

3. Virginia High School Literary and Athletic League — Debate — Part I. Organiza- 

tion, Parliamentary Forms and Rules. Part IL Arguments and References 

4. Virginia High School Literary and Athletic League — Debate — Woman's Suffrage 

5. Virginia High School Literary and Athletic League — Debate — Good Roads 

6. Extension Series, Vol. L No. 2 — University E-xtension Lectures 

7. Extension Series, Vol. L No. 3 — Compulsory Education 

8. Extension Series, Vol. L No. 4 — Religious Activities and Advantages at the Uni- 

versity of Virginia 

9. Extension Series, Vol. L No^ 5 — Program for the use of Sunday Schools and 

Churches in the observance of Country Church Day 

10. Extension Series, Vol. I, No. 6 — Announcement of the Curry Memorial School 

of Education 

11. Extension Series, Vol. I, No. 7 — Program of the Ninth Annual Rural Life Con- 

ference, University of Virginia Summer School, July 17 to 21, 1916 

12. Extension Series, Vol. 11, No. 1 — Official Syllabus of Bible Study for High 

School Pupils 

13. Extension Series, Vol. 11, No. 2 — The Virginia High School and Athletic League 

14. Extension Series, \'ol. H, No. 3 — A Bibliography of Educational Surveys and 

Tests 

15. Extension Series, Vol. H, No. 4 — Principles Hivolved in the Teaching of Hand- 

writing 

16. Extension Series, V'ol. 11, No. 5 — Summer School of Music; Special Announcement. 

Copies of these bulletins will be sent to any one upon application to 

BUREAU OF EXTENSION, 

Charles G. Maphis, Chairman 

University, Virginia 



p, of -^. 



Th^ Relation of the Colleges and Universi- 
tic^s of the South to the National Crisis ' 



Bv Wm. M. Thornton, B. A.. LL. D., 

Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Virginia. 



We have accustomed ourselves to think of our America as a 
new country and of our people as a youthful nation. We often 
speak of our government as the latest experiment in represent- 
ative demoncracy and picture the other nations as watching with 
amused tolerance the play of the bubbles in our political cru- 
cible. Yet we have only to open our minds to the facts of hu- 
man history to discover that the Government in Washington is 
the oldest government now existing on this earth, and that our 
political experiment offers to the world such guarantees of sta- 
bility as are nowhere else to be discovered. 

We think of ourselves also as a peace-loving folk and quote 
with deep earnestness and conviction Thomas Jefferson's phrase : 
"Peace is our passion; wrongs might drive us from it; but we 
prefer every other just principle before we would recur to war." 

Yet during the one hundred and forty-one years which have 
elapsed since July 4th, 1776, we have fought five wars, coming 
off each time victorious. We have seen in all sixteen solid years 
of battle. The larger part of our national domain has come to 
us as spoil of war. The great axioms of our political life were 
forged in the fires of war. The revolutionary war established 
our Independence. The war of 1812 woke us to Nationality. 
The ]\Iexican war brought to birth our consciousness of Sover- 
eignty in the Western Hemisphere. The Civil war transformed 
the "more perfect" union of our forefathers into an Indissoluble 
Union and by the abolition of slavery demonstrated the genuine- 



*An address delivered Wednesday, Oct. 14th, 1917, 8:30 P. M., be- 
fore the Southern Commercial Congress in the North Ball Room of 
the Astor Hotel. 

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"ness of America's "decent respect for the opinion of mankind." 
And last of all the Spanish-American war brought home to our 
national conscience the call of destiny and duty, teaching us that 
■on this God-governed earth no nation liveth to itself and no na- 
tion dieth to itself, — that in our Christianized civilization the 
privileges of nationality and the obligations of nationality cannot 
be permanently divided. As each man is his brother's keeper, 
so each nation must share the guardianship of her sister na- 
tions. 

Surely it does not lie in the mouth of any American to speak 
of wars as unmixed evils. It was through war that we were 
born into the great family of nations. It was in war that we 
learned the first lessons of collective effort and national energy. 
It was war which revealed to America her privilege of leadership 
and opened her eyes to her continental destiny. It was through 
war that the New South and the New North were united in 
perpetual amity. It was war and war alone which by its thun- 
derbolts availed to split and scatter the only cloud which from 
the birth of this nation had darkened our political sky. And it 
was from war's fierce tumult that the still, small voice of duty 
spoke calling us to world-wide service in the cause of human 
freedom. I am no eulogist of war, no apologist for its evils; 
my childhood knew them in all their bitterness, in all their terror. 
I am glad and grateful that we have never lifted the gage of 
battle, save when long endurance of wrongs had made a mock- 
ery of repeated efforts for amendment. But I should be blind 
to the light of truth and deaf to the voice of reason if I did not 
see that under the guidance of Heaven wars had given to this 
country its chief national virtues — unity of spirit, concentration 
of power, a nobler patriotism, a truer political ideal, and a loftier 
political purpose. 

In the great conflict which some of us still remember the South 
learned its most lasting and exalted lessons. Men learned to give 
without stinting — to the last dollar, to the last horse, to the last 
bushel of corn, to the last pound of meat. Mothers were taught 
that their country was more sacred and more precious than their 
sons. Wives staunched their tears whilst they buckled on their 
husbands' sabres and cheered them on the march. Girls sent 
their lovers into the storm of battle with kisses still sweet upon 

[152] 



their lips. Timid women, left unguarded on the broad Southern 
plantations, learned to be brave and strong, to do a man's work, 
to fulfil a man's duties. Soldiers learned to face danger, to smile 
ounds, to jest at weariness, to scoff at death. The graduates 
1 n that fierce curriculum of four blood-stained years came 
back to rebuild the desolated homes, to plough again the de- 
vastated fields. These were the men — not their sons or their 
grandsons — who created the New South and wrested from ruin 
a truer and a greater prosperity. With no indemnities, with no 
foreign aid, despite political oppression, despite unjust taxation, 
they rebuilt their homes, restocked their farms, organized gov- 
ernments, created social order, established schools, erected their 
churches, and made over into nobler and finer forms the shat- 
tered civilization of their Golden Age. We bare our heads to 
the soldiers who marched with Jackson and rode with Stuart 
and fought with Lee. As one of their own numl^er has said 
of them : 

"They could cherish honour, they could cherish principle, they 
could cherish love ; but they could not cherish hate." 

Such was their spirit, such their work in those far-off days. 
And so the spirit of these vanquished men is today victorious. 
It was the spirit of their immortal leader; the spirit which cre- 
ated the New South ; the spirit which animates this Southern 
Commercial Congress; the spirit which has seated in the White 
House that great Southern president upon whom the hopes of 
this war-torn world today depend. 

With greater wealth and greater power we are facing now a 
greater war. Again there comes to America the oldest govern- 
ment on earth, the most stable, the most peace-loving, the call 
for supreme sacrifice, for supreme devotion. As in the Ameri- 
can Civil War, so in this vast World War, there are deep-lying 
political problems which press for final solution. A new doctrine 
of National Sovereignty, stripped of all the moral sanctions of 
civilization, is locked in deadly grapple with the concepts of na- 
tional good faith and national honour. The fight again must 
be to a finish. Compromise would spell defeat. * Germany, un- 
scrupulous and unconquered, would be the deadliest foe of hu- 
man civilization. Once more America has pledged to the cause 
of righteousness life and fortune. Once more she must be pre- 

[153] 



pared to give unstintingly — to the last dollar, the last man, the 
last horse, the last ship, the last gun. The call is nation-wide 
and colleges and universities are summoned to do their part. We 
ask today what they have done, what they are doing, what in 
the future they will do to make this world safe for democracy. 

If I speak for the University, with which I have the honour 
to be connected, it is because I know her story best and not 
because other schools have done less or given less. Of the 9,000 
Hving alumni and students of the University of Virginia, 1,800 
or twenty per cent, are in active service for the nation, as against 
six per cent of our total national man-power. When war was 
declared 800 out of a thousand resident students entered at once 
on a vigorous course of military training, and of these 200 were 
sent forward by the Commandant at the end of the session to 
the various Reserve Officers' Training Camps. Since that time 
we have given two units of forty-five men each to the Allen- 
town Camp and have organized Base Hospital Unit, No. 41, cap- 
able of handling a military hospital of 1,000 beds. Our contri- 
bution in undergraduates to the National Army and the related 
industrial services of the country may be estimated from the 
fact that in place of our usual annual growth of five to ten per 
cent, we have this year a loss in attendance of about thirty per 
cent. Our medical undergraduates by a ruling of the War De- 
partment have been permitted to continue their studies, subject 
to the obligation of reporting for public service as soon as they 
win their degrees. Unfortunately the same wise foresight has 
not prevailed as to the students of engineering ; our graduating 
class has been decimated by the draft law and the attendance 
has been maintained only because of a large influx of Freshmen 
students of engineering. The Chief of Engineers of the United 
States Army declared recently in a public address before an 
audience of engineers : 

*Tt is a mistake for a trained man to go into the ranks with 
a musket. It is a waste of good material. How many of us 
will be needed we do not know, but do not let us waste this 
wonderful material that we have by putting a man, who is fitted 
to be a leader of men, fitted to do high service, to the perform- 
ing of a service which does not require education or training, 
with the probability of his complete loss to the country." 

[154] 



The Secretary of War has expressed himself to the same ef- 
fect. The Superintendent of the United States Mihtary Acad- 
emy urges that young men finish their course of study in Engi- 
neering. Yet despite this consensus of expert opinion the ad- 
ministrative chiefs of the War Department continue to drain 
away from the Engineering Schools their best material before 
the training is complete. They take this material not for engi- 
neering service, but for the trenches. Even if for the present 
they have more engineers than they require they should take 
some heed of the needs of the army and the country in the not 
distant future. 

Let us turn next to the question of the work of the colleges 
and universities today. Once more I take my own university 
as a sample, because, as far as I know, all the schools are pursu- 
ing the same aims and employing the same methods. Military 
training is continued. We are fortunate in having the services 
of an accomplished West-Pointer for this work and the drill 
and the lectures on military science go briskly on. Under our 
elective system it has been thought best not to require the mili- 
tary course for all students ; but in the School of Engineering 
we have devised a plan which works just as well. We have in- 
corporated this course into the requirements for all degrees ; and 
the student who does not take it must ofifer instead two addi- 
tional courses of technical study as an equivalent. The result 
is that all the Engineering students are in Colonel Cole's bat- 
talion. 

In addition to the military training we have introduced a large 
number of other courses more or less closely related to the war 
work. As examples I may mention intensive courses in French, 
German, and Spanish, so taught as to give a working knowledge 
of these languages for actual speaking and writing. They are 
conducted somewhat on the plan of the laboratory courses in a 
science, following the rule of Aristotle, which teaches that "the 
best way to learn anything well, which has to be done after it is 
learned, is always to be a-doing while we are a-learning." These 
courses exact more effort and require more time than the parallel 
literary courses in the same languages and are given therefore 
a larger measure of academic credit. 

Of another type, but organized to meet the same demand, are 

[155] 



courses in telegraphy, telephony, wireless, signalling, and pho- 
tography. These also are taught so as to secure practical values 
as well as scientific understanding. All that is fundamentally 
necessary in the sciences of light, heat, magnetism, and elec- 
tricity is thoroughly given. But the student does not stop here ; 
he goes on to practical essays of his own power and is required 
to attain a specified standard of expert knowledge. 

In a third group fall the new courses offered in the political 
geography of all the great European states, in meteorology, in 
physical geography, and in international law and diplomacy. 
From the School of Engineering have been taken over courses 
in plane surveying, topographical surveying, topographical draw- 
ing, map-making, navigation, field astronomy, automobile con- 
struction and care, and the characteristics and uses of timber. 
In each course the intensive method is followed and abundant 
practical exercises serve to consolidate the student's knowledge. 
All have one aim — the preparation of young Americans for skil- 
ful and intelligent patriotic service. 

Most interesting of all present-day speculations in every de- 
partment of human thought are those which deal with the con- 
duct of life after the war. Teachers like other men are asking 
themselves what is going to happen. Some are bold enough to 
assume the prophetic mantle and specify a programme of com- 
ing educational reforms. My aim must be more modest and 
confine itself to a brief consideration of such present educational 
movements as seem likely to project their influence into the fu- 
ture. One sure anchor must hold in all such speculations. The 
curriculum of the colleges represents the slowly accumulated 
thought and judgment of civilized mankind on the topics which 
are of most worth to the human race. Five hundred years have 
been spent on its development and the meditation and wisdom 
of long generations of deep-thinking men. It is a living organ- 
ism, not a dead aggregate, and grows from more to more as hu- 
man science expands its realm. It has survived wars, revolutions, 
and reformations, and in its great outlines has remained the same. 
We should be foolish therefore to look for any sudden upheaval 
which would shatter this curriculum and remold its fragments 
into novel forms. As in the past, so in the future it will con- 

f 156 1 



tinue to grow, to adapt itself to humanity's expanding thought 
and widening needs, to throw out new shoots, to discard dead 
branches; but after the war the body of human science must re- 
main on the whole what it was before the war, and teachers 
must expound the old learning, although with a new spirit and 
to a new world. 

If we ask what will be the manifestation of that new spirit, 
under what form it will come, I can best express my thought by 
asking you to reflect for a little on an old-fashioned phrase — 
colleges of the arts and sciences. It is a mere phrase now and 
we use it as a formula, careless of its meaning. A\'hat did it 
mean when it first passed current as fresh coin from the mint 
of speech? In that day Scientia meant not natural science alone 
nor physical science, but any coherent body of organized knowl- 
edge. To each science there was an art, a body of expert learn- 
ing, founded on that science and culminating in some worthy 
human utility. Grammar w'as a science in those days — Latin 
Grammar — and grammar culminated in the art of reading, writ- 
ing and speaking the Latin tongue. Rhetoric was a science and 
on it w^as founded the art of Oratory, useful alike to priest and 
politician, general and king. Out of every science deemed worthy 
of admission to the curriculum grew some useful art; and be- 
neath every art engaging a scholar's attention must lie some 
science, some coherent body of organized knowledge. x\ master 
of arts was one who was versed in the sciences of both Trivium 
and Ouadrivium and was expert also in the arts founded upon 
them. 

The new world for which we are looking will be like that old 
world of the Revival of Learnings torn and tormented by war. 
To make the world over men will need not only the abstract 
sciences now taught in our universities but also the useful arts 
which rest upon them and grow out of them. I believe that the 
educational reform of the new world will discard from the cur- 
riculum of our colleges and universities every science, which is 
not the foundation of some useful art, and will bring into the 
curriculum every useful art whose foundation is a coherent body 
of organized knowledge. 

In this great overturn the dead must go ; the living must re- 

[157] 



main. There are two languages in all our universities which are 
called the dead languages. They are really dead ; their professors 
have killed them. But locked up in these dark caskets are some 
of the most vital treasures of humanity — the splendid music of 
Virgil, the tragic force of Sophocles, the historic vision of Thucyd- 
ides, the serene wisdom of Plato, the pregnant eloquence of 
Cicero, the wholesome wit of Horace. Such things are im- 
mortal ; they cannot he killed, they will never die. Prisoned in 
the caskets of formal scholarship they are hidden away and the 
student's eye and ear and heart watch and listen and long for 
them in vain. One business of the new education will be to 
raise these living treasures from the dead ; for humanity will not, 
cannot let them go. They are like the great gods of the an- 
cient world ; even their graven images could breathe divine oracles 
into the listening ear of the waiting worshipper. 

Even so when that new world comes I look to see in our uni- 
versities not a new body of learning, but a new spirit in the old 
beautiful body. I look to see not only the dead languages cast 
into the discard but the dead philosophies and the dead histories 
and the dead literatures and the dead sciences. As the Sabbath 
was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, so human learn- 
ing is made for man and not man for learning. That Science 
which has no voice for the mind and the heart of humanity is 
of little worth. That Science which culminates in no useful hu- 
man art will have no place in the curriculum of the new world. 

It seems a safe estimate to say that in the armies of America 
are enlisted more than 60,000 young collegians. Many of these 
will come back no more ; but when the war is ended many more 
will seek again their college homes. It is these men, who will 
bring with them the new purpose and the new spirit. They will 
know what it is to stand face to face with death and never 
quiver. They will know life and its grim drafts upon human 
energy and human courage. They will demand the realities of 
scholarship, not the shams of learning. It is for these men that 
all American universities should put their houses in order. 

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